


you are the reason

by kashxy



Category: Chaos Walking - Fandom
Genre: Beating, Noise Weapon, Non Canon (Kinda), The Asking, Torture, Violence, Waterboarding, tom holland - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashxy/pseuds/kashxy
Summary: “i’ll ask you again, viola.” and todd can hear his words through the microphone, can hear his own noise even, rushing through his ears, drowning out anything viola says in answer to the question he knows is being jammed down her throat.don’t tell him. please don’t tell him.mr hammer strikes him again, straight into his stomach so he doubles over, coughing and spluttering, as bile bubbles at his lips.“very well.”
Relationships: Mayor Prentiss & Todd Hewitt, Viola Eade & Todd Hewitt
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	you are the reason

todd’s seen this room before.

he’d stood next to davy, eyes unfocused and gazed on that particular spot on that same white wall behind the chair, barely flinching at the screams and cries coming from the women being branded over and over and over again before his eyes.

he remembers strapping them to the chair, the motion written into his brain so vividly that he barely has to be conscious to do it. he remembers how davy had nudged him, uncoordinated and hesitant, worry and nerves and asking marks flying randomly in his noise. he hadn’t ever learnt to contain it, and todd’s sure he could pick out davy’s noise from a mile away.

he’s seen this room before - but never from this angle. 

the mirror works exactly the way mayor prentiss had wanted it to - he can see every inch of todd’s bound, shivering body, but he himself can see nothing but a dark wall. if the small lightbulb above his head reached far enough to cover the darkest corners of the room, perhaps he’d see a way out. 

_a way to destroy the mayor_. 

mr hammar backhands him across the face without saying anything, clearly poking straight into todd’s noise and pulling out what he wants to hear to use against him. 

he tries to rein it in, that stupid, stupid line repeating over and over and over again in his head, _i am the circle and the circle is me_ , constant, like a broken clock.

“i can’t tell you how much i’m going to enjoy this, todd.” mr hammar again, his face right close now, all snarl and no smile, spit flying off his lips as he speaks.

todd remembers the last time he’d been tied to a chair under mr hammar’s almost gleeful glare. how he’d ached, his noise screaming - _ocean_ , no! no, stop, **OCEAN**! - he remembers crying, shameful, ugly tears that he’d apologised a thousand times for. it wasn’t for the pain itself, but for the ache of dropping viola in the fire with something as simple as loose thoughts.

todd blinks and spits straight at mr hammar, noise swelling with glee as it hits him straight in the eye and he stumbles back, wiping and gagging.

“come here, you little shit-” he marches straight to todd, who couldn’t have moved if he tried, hand wrapping around his neck, right under his chin, squeezing and digging until he’s choking for breath, eyes bugging, and the walls so dark, darkening, darkening as he tries to breathe-

“i would think that’s quite enough, mr hammar.” a voice, mayor prentiss’s, echoing through the room. he can hear a click, and then the sound of external white noise, the sound of him locking the sound on so todd can hear every word, every whisper, and so they can hear him too, they can hear everything-

“viola!” he screams, gasping and thrashing, knowing she’s there, knowing she’s there like she always is, small and injured but glaring and spitting at the mayor, probably running him up the wall in the way only she knows how. 

“todd!” and there it is, emotional and thick, and todd’s sure if she had noise it’d be all pink and swollen and rushing but directed straight at him. “i ain’t telling you a damn thing.” and there, directly at mayor prentiss, biting, and her not-there noise would be red and slashing, filled to the brim with images of the bomb and the dead spackle and todd himself fainting, and-

todd flinches. he doesn’t want to think how angry her noise’d be.

“this can be easier on our todd, here. he doesn’t need to get hurt.” 

and mayor prentiss almost sounds genuine, so trustworthy that todd himself finds the words _they’re coming from the east_ bubbling at the back of his throat. 

he can hear viola scoff, almost in shock, but he can hear a slight waver too, the very hint of an inkling of anxiety that only he knows about.

_don’t tell him, viola_ , he yells, but it doesn’t come out in words. he hopes she can read his noise even though it feels like she’s a thousand miles away all over again.

“he’s not _our_ todd.” she bites back. “he ain’t your nothing.” 

mr hammar snakes his way back round to the front so todd can see every line of his face, every expression and snarl he makes. he’s pissed, and the bonds at todd’s wrists don’t leave any room for escape. 

he pulls a fist back, all the while smiling and smiling and smiling, that god awful smile that’s all teeth and spit and gums and stretches halfway across his face like it’ll suffocate him if he’s not careful. it hits him right under the ribs, knocking the wind straight from his lungs so he leeches forward and gasps at the ground.

“viola,” mayor prentiss says. “i’m sure you know by now that i will get the information i want. you’re choosing to do it the hard way.”

“i ain’t choosing a damn thing.” viola bites back, and todd smiles through the gasps, remembering how she used to hate him saying ain’t, how she used to speak all proper in the same way the mayor does. “it’s you who’s hurting him. watch him.” 

there’s a pause and todd manages to smile at the mirror, ignoring the soft murmur of a warning behind him from mr hammar. he pulls against the bonds, ignoring the way the rope burns his wrists as he struggles. he can’t see mayor prentiss from here, but he can imagine his expression.

“don’t you hurt her.” he yells when the pause stretches on a little too long. “don’t you lay an effing finger on her, you hear me?” 

mr hammar nods out of the corner of his eye and places a hand on the little ring at the back of the slab he’s strapped to. 

“and this?” mr hammar whispers, too gleeful, too excited. “i’m going to enjoy this an _awful_ lot.” 

if he says anything else, todd doesn’t hear it. he’s too focused on the large bucket of water rushing up to meet him, still until his head is shoved under and he’s thrashing and screaming, all sense of trying to hold his breath gone, head spinning with worry for viola rather than his own aching lungs. 

he can’t hear anything under here besides his own gargled screaming. he thrashes and thrashes, head smacking back into the slab as he does, wrists pulling so impossibly hard at the rope that he feels they’ll both snap in half before the binding does.

he can’t breathe, head going so fuzzy that it _aches_ , a different kind of pain he’s never felt before, a kind of pain that makes him want to claw his own brain out just to stop it hurting, and he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t breathe-

mr hammar pulls him up just before he passes out, his body jerking involuntarily as it gasps and gasps for air, his head spinning, his hair that’s really too long now dripping into his eyes and wetting his shirt, the same shirt with the silver A adorning the left hand chest that the man who’s watching his torture gave to him. 

he sucks in air, coming back slowly to viola crying out, small pounds that he’s half sure must be her banging at the mirror. he retches, spitting out water at the floor just below his feet, breathing deeper than he ever has before. 

“the girl’s welfare is not your highest concern right now, todd.” the mayor says, calm and collected and todd wants so bad to scream until he can’t anymore, smack him until his hand hurts, but he can barely breathe and mr hammar is watching him heave and gasp and jerk and he’s not sure all the water streaming from his eyes is just from the bucket and he just feels so pathetic that he’s ready to slink down into the rope and let them do whatever they want to him. 

“i’ll ask you again, viola.” and todd can finally hear his words through the microphone, can hear his own noise even, rushing through his ears like it’s catching him up on everything he missed, so loud that it drowns out anything viola says in answer to the question he knows is being jammed down her throat.

_don’t tell him. please don’t tell him._

mayor hammer strikes him again, straight into his stomach so he doubles over, coughing and spluttering as bile bubbles at his lips. every stuttering breath is painful, sucked in through clenched teeth as his lungs heave behind his ribs. 

“very well.”

he can see it coming now, because mr hammar does it slowly, too slowly, allowing him to thrash and pull and do more damage to himself and gasp in air and scream it all out as the water gets closer closer closer-

he tries to stay still under this time, kicking his legs as much as he can, his head thrashing back and forth even as he tries to calm down. he could barely breathe last time and never got to prepare himself this time and if he listens closely enough he can hear mr hammar laughing and he pulls and pulls at the rope bounding his wrists above him and he can’t breathe he’s gonna drown they’re gonna kill him they’re gonna kill him-

when he’s let up this time, he doesn’t bother dry heaving; he goes straight to throwing up all down the front of his shirt, all down his trousers, and he can’t even think straight enough to feel ashamed. 

mr hammar grimaces and steps back but instead of swelling with pride, his noise is foggy and grey, replaying the feeling of his head exploding underwater over and over and over again until he’s gasping like those fish he’d seen ben catch all that time ago. 

“i’m sure todd here has had enough.” mayor prentiss says. 

“i can-” todd chokes out, coughing at the hoarseness in his throat. “i can take it, viola. don’t you tell him nothing.” 

mr hammar backhands him across the face, one hand fisting in his hair before he can whip his head back, keeping him paralysed looking straight ahead, his head slamming into the slab beneath him over and over again. 

“shut up.” he says when todd whimpers a little louder than he’d have liked to. he knows mr hammar can hear the embarrassment in his noise.

“viola, i’ve grown tired of fighting with you. the sooner you realise our common enemy, the sooner you’ll learn your place, just like todd here has.” 

todd glares at the wall, at the A on his shoulder, at the very feeling of still adorning the uniform of a murderer who finds pleasure in torturing women and spackle and in keeping him away from viola for so long and in making his own son feel so unloved his only hope is-

“that’s quite enough, todd.” there’s a bite to it, but it’s not directed at him, he can tell. there’s been an eerie silence from viola, the kind of silence that he can imagine only comes from her sitting still, biting her tongue and glaring through her eyelashes at the man who’d been ruining their lives all these months. 

mr hammar breaks him out of his thoughts with a kick to the ankles, obviously conversing somehow with mayor prentiss from beyond the mirror. 

and it’s then that todd remembers the explosion had broken both his ankles. 

and the pain is something he’s never felt before, exploding through his legs, paralysing his whole body as it arches right off the slab, a scream escaping his throat and never ever stopping, screaming screaming until he can’t breathe and even then he carries on screaming, not caring if it makes him look weak or stupid or embarrassed and he doesn’t effing care, he doesn’t- 

there’s someone else screaming too. 

viola. 

“stop! you’re hurting him, stop it!” she cries, those soft thumps that he’s now sure are her pounding on the window echoing through the microphone. 

todd chokes back the scream as mr hammar pokes at his ankles again, whistling lowly with that same shit eating grin he always wears. 

“done a good job on this, he has.” he says, and todd hates hates _hates_ that he can’t see mayor prentiss’s face. “won’t be walking for a while, my boy, much less running.” 

and he laughs and laughs and todd realises that all that’s running through his noise is run run run, just like ben had told him, just like him and viola had done and had never stopped doing since. 

“hold on.” he says, barely above a whisper but loud enough that he knows viola can hear it. hold on till-

he bites back the thought. _i am the circle and the circle is me_. 

“i’m growing tired of waiting for information i require. i’ll get what i want either way.” the mayor’s voice is still calm, but there’s a bite in it, too, some hidden annoyance that todd can’t figure out. he wonders if viola can hear it too, can hear that this is different, that this is affecting him, that this isn’t a routine Asking.

“i’ll ask you one last time, viola,” the mayor says again, and todd can see that stupidly ugly grin stretch across mr hammar’s face again, too big that it’ll eat him if he’s not careful. “where is the army?” 

viola hesitates, and todd can hear the verbal sigh from the mayor, and then he’s under the water again and up again and back down and he’s being thrust in and out of the water so quickly he can’t breathe in between and he can hear mr hammar laughing and laughing and he pulls him up once more and-

“they’re coming from the east!” viola screams. “they’re coming from the east. please stop.” 

the mayor hums, and todd takes the opportunity to suck in the air he’s been so desperate for, his chest heaving as he looks at the floor, at his broken ankles, and the pool of vomit on the floor. 

“the east.” the mayor says. “thank you, todd.” 

todd manages to lift his head, spitting out water as he tries to breathe and shake the wet hair from his face.

“i didn’t do anything.” he spits, hands curling into fists. “i ain’t doing anything for you.” 

“if that’s what you think.” mayor prentiss says and in that moment todd manages to regain his noise, manages to make the room read what he wants it to as best as he knows how. he’s about to open his mouth when the door opens and he can see the mayor about to leave, a smirk ever so present on his face and his eye almost in a permanent wink.

“ _east, east, east_.” he says. “it was all over your noise from the beginning.” 


End file.
